Notions is a solo presentation of paintings by Tāmaki Makaurau based artist Campbell Patterson. Accumulative brushstrokes produce painted surfaces, ones which bear the traces of repeated instances of revisitation and revision. Many of these artworks are the result of a task-based approach to painting, one that is also testament to the sometimes reluctant passage of time.

Campbell Patterson (b. 1983) creates works in an interchangeable array of media that evoke the mundane, repetitive, but frequently sublime aspects of everyday living and suburban experience. In his video work, Patterson often transforms his body into an absurd domestic tool, such as in the ongoing series Lifting my mother for as long as I can (2006– ). Particularly through the use of repetition, Patterson invokes the conceptual tradition of mid-twentieth century through figures like Stanley Brouwn and On Kawara—transplanted into the contexts of domestic Aotearoa environments.

Patterson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 2006. His work has been included in: GROUP PORTRAIT, Phillida Reid, London (2023); the body and its outside, Michael Lett, Auckland (2021); Contact Us, Cement Fondu, Sydney (2020); Performance Portraits, Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2016); Art as a verb, Artspace, Sydney (2015) and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2010). Significant solo exhibitions include: toot floor, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, Dunedin (2018), the Pah Homestead, Auckland (2019) call sick, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2017) and Honky Tonkin’, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland (2015). 

Recently Patterson has undertaken residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California and at Gasworks, London in the United Kingdom. In 2017 Patterson was awarded the Frances Hodgkins fellowship and in 2015 he conducted a Parehuia Artists’ Residency at McCahon House, Titirangi.